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On Monday, LVMH Watches CEO Frédéric Arnault and Julien Tornare, CEO of Tag Heuer, brought together the watch aristocracy in Geneva, for a dinner celebrating the start of the Watches and Wonders fair. Guests included historian and writer Nick Foulkes; Bill Prince, editor in chief of Wallpaper and author of a coffee table book on the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak; Ben Clymer, the New York-based founder of watch site Hodinkee; Wei Koh, founder of Singapore publication Revolution Watch; and Andrew McUtchen, who founded Time+Tide, a watch media platform in Melbourne.
The guest list reinforced the rise and rise of such watch aficionado platforms. Though this wasn’t always the case. Fifteen years ago, digital watch platforms didn’t have a seat at the watchmakers’ table. Now, some have become brands themselves and watch brands collaborate with them on limited editions and content.
The intersection of watches and editorial content goes hand in hand, Time + Tide’s McUtchen says. “Watches are purchases that need a lot of validation. The left brain ultimately needs to be validated to spend $10,000 on a little machine that has 167 moving parts.”
It’s an undercurrent at this year’s Watches and Wonders, which is catering more to Gen Z and female consumers. Watch brands have long favoured traditional communications centred around glossy campaigns and an exclusive — and sometimes stiff — approach, in line with their hefty prices. They are increasingly moving away from classic recipes to better connect with young and expert consumers eager for authenticity and playfulness. Marketing strategies are evolving in step. Brands are connecting with an ecosystem of influencers and collectors; experimenting on TikTok and thoughtfully picking their brand ambassadors and collaborations. It’s ushering in a new era of connection between watch brands, known for tradition, and their target customers.
During a press session at Watches and Wonders, Cartier president and CEO Cyrille Vigneron noted the dynamism of young watch collector clubs in places like Paris, California and Singapore. “We have groups of young watch collectors who are entrepreneurs. They work very hard for 10 years, go to IPO, have a lot of means and want the rarest pieces right away. They come to us and ask for a Crash,” he says, referring to one of Cartier’s watches with a waitlist (others include Tank Normale and the Baignoire bangle).
The new influencer class
Part of the shift is the spike in savvy aficionados with platforms and audiences. “Now, we’re under the microscope, with bloggers taking the watch apart to take photos of every component,” says Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, product creation executive director of the Bulgari watch division. Bulgari created limited-edition watches with Hodinkee and Revolution, both of which cater to a distinct audience. “Hodinkee is closer to the vintage universe, with a specific taste. Revolution is more rock. If I design a watch with a fluorescent dial, it’s cooler for Revolution,” he notes, also citing other sites like Monochrome, Watchonista and Fratello Watches.
“These site founders are multi-hyphenates: influencers, content producers, collectors, retailers etc,” says Piaget global head of PR Anne-Sophie Mallard. We can add media tycoon to the list. Clymer started Hodinkee as a blog in 2008, added an e-commerce component in 2012 and raised $40 million in Series B funding in 2020 led by private equity firm TCG. Other investors included LVMH Luxury Ventures, an investment entity operating within the LVMH Group, American football star Tom Brady and singer John Mayer. Today Hodinkee has a staff of around 60.
One newcomer is Heist Out, an underground watch magazine launched last year by Lorenzo Maillard and Maxime Couturier that they describe as “dissident, divisive, offbeat”. Heist Out teamed up with Sotheby’s Geneva for a watch auction on the Thursday of Watches and Wonders. The event took place in a wine cellar. In lieu of a catalogue, they created cards “like Pokemon cards”, Maillard explains. Maillard and Couturier, 30 and 33 respectively, also founded digital communications agency Apresdemain. “There’s a need in the industry to break codes, get inspiration from other industries like fashion. We’re in a very traditional industry that is no longer very useful. There’s a need to be more and more creative. The luxury aspect has created a very exclusive mindset. That’s a boundary with new generations that crave authenticity,” Maillard says.
In 2022, Cartier created an Instagram account — @CartierWatchCommunity — to cater to Cartier’s community of watch enthusiasts. It has a slightly less polished aesthetic to the house’s main account, and posts in collaboration with the likes of Mike Nouveau, a vintage watch dealer and influencer and Revolution’s Wei Koh.
TikTok content
Meanwhile, videos tagged with #luxurywatch on TikTok have increased by 241 per cent year-on-year, accumulating over 900 million views, according to the platform. “Increasingly, prestigious brands like Hublot, Tag Heuer and Audemars Piguet are collaborating with creators on the platform,” says Tatiana Dupont, luxury fashion and beauty director at TikTok, who also noted that IWC became the first luxury watch brand last year to host a live stream exclusively on TikTok, when revealing a new creation.
“Creators are making a big impact on TikTok, like @siyuanhorologe with over one million followers. He shares his skill in taking apart and putting together luxury watches in two to three minute videos using ASMR techniques. And there’s Trang Trinh of @girlsoclock, who gives a stylish look at watchmaking,” she says. There’s also Nouveau, who counts 381,500 TikTok followers and was profiled by the New York Times; and Wristcheck founded by Austen Chu.
Celebrity marketing: Loyalty, expertise and fun
On Tuesday, the opening day of Watches and Wonders, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, who has been a brand ambassador for IWC Schaffhausen since 2022 and a particular advocate of big watches, visited the Swiss watch brand’s booth; drawing in crowds and signalling that celebrity pull is still strong for the category.
What’s more prominent now is the expectation that a celebrity watch ambassador will be a watch enthusiast themselves. “The industry has entered a phase where even the celebrity ambassador needs to have a degree of watch cognisance,” says Time+Tide’s McUtchen. “John Mayer for example, is a watch collector and a borderline watch expert, which was a perfect match for Audemars Piguet on their collaboration. In this type of partnership, a brand can leverage a new audience but the spokesperson actually knows about watches and their nuances. The people that brands are choosing have a deep loyalty existing or they can speak with knowledge and authority.” This came after Audemars Piguet unveiled late last year a collaboration with rapper Travis Scott, who is also a watch collector.
McUtchen praises the longevity of the Daniel Craig and Omega collaboration. “There is a loyalty between the Bond franchise and the brand that is assuring for people (James Bond has worn an Omega Seamaster in every film since 1995). Daniel Craig does a really good job at speaking about watches. He is knowledgeable enough. You don’t have to talk about the technical details but it’s very hard for someone on a shallow cosmetic level to influence people on watches.”
Similarly, he praises the Ryan Gosling and Tag Heuer collaboration announced in late 2021. “Ryan Gosling is a really good one for Tag Heuer, he hasn’t jumped around, he’s a mix of things that are on brand,” McUtchen says. Tag also showed it’s willing to have fun: the brand revealed a five-minute film last year titled The Chase for Carrera starring Gosling. In it, Gosling plays himself, trying to steal the Carrera watch on the set of a movie. Arnault, who was CEO of Tag Heuer at the time, described the film as “epic” and “daring”.
Breitling released in February a limited-edition watch with Victoria Beckham (her husband David Beckham is an ambassador of Tudor, Rolex’s little sibling). There’s a Breitling Chronomat Automatic 36 Victoria Beckham version in yellow gold at €29,500 that is available on pre-sale. “You cannot look at the watch industry as an isolated silo, everything is transversal, this is why you have collabs. The Beckham collaboration was a means to open the brand. “We will open it more especially in the female segment,” says Breitling CEO Georges Kern.
Aside from his role as Breitling, Kern produces movies and series. “I do it for fun. It’s very similar to watches, it’s storytelling,” he says.
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